The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Organizational Behavior

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Page 226
decade. The current thinking among most theorists is that impression management behaviors are often
sincere components of social and organizational behavior. As Tetlock and Manstead (1985, pp. 61–62)
noted, "although some writers have used the term impression management to refer to the self-conscious
deception of others (e.g., Gaes, Kalle, & Tedeschi, 1978), there is no compelling psychological reason
why impression management must be either duplicitous or under conscious control. Impression
management may be the product of highly overlearned habits or scripts, the original functions of which
people have long forgotten."
In an authoritative review, Schlenker and Weigold (1992) distinguished between restrictive and
expansive views of impression management. The restrictive view sees impression management as a
generally negative often deceptive set of behaviors aimed at illicitly gaining social POWER and
approval. The now more accepted expansive view sees impression management as a fundamental aspect
of social and organizational interactions. It is perhaps best to view impression management behaviors as
falling on a continuum ranging from sincere, accurate presentations to conscious deception.
The popularity of impression management in organizational scholarship is a relatively recent
phenomenon. While many of the concepts of impression management were utilized in areas such as
organizational politics, there were few organizational investigations of impression management before
the early 1980s. Not until the mid-1980s did the organizational impression management perspective
begin to gain an identity theoretically distinct from the earlier literature on organizational politics and
attain a degree of independent status. Thus, although popular in social psychology for over two decades,
it is only relatively recently that the organizational impression management literature has expanded into
the full range of organizational behavior topic areas. It seems fair to say that impression management
now provides explanatory power for a wide range of topics across the organizational sciences.
A number of challenges remain for organizational impression management. Three of note are:
(1) Can impression management be trained? Although training in impression management performance
and detection has been recommended (Giacalone, 1989), impression management has yet to have true
empirically derived practitioner applications. A first step may require viewing impression management
as a desirable set of skills rather than a deficit.
(2) Are impression management motivation and tactics applicable to an increasingly diverse,
multinational workforce? As organizations grow increasingly diverse and multinational impression
management may be crucial to members of racial/ethnic minority groups, women, immigrants, and
expatriates who often need to please majority group members in positions of greater social power.
Understanding how impression management behaviors are interpreted by others can also serve as the
basis for smoother interactions and a means for solving potential communication problems among
individuals from diverse backgrounds (Rosenfeld, Giacalone & Riordan, 1994).
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